The present invention relates in general to vacuum operations and in particular to a new and useful device for heating or cooling electron-microscopic specimens during a treatment, for example a vapor deposition accentuating contrasts for the subsequent electron-microscopic examination or to examine the specimen at different temperatures.
Specimens, particularly biological ones, are usually cooled during the vapor deposition, to prevent their overheating, or specimens such as metallurgical microsections are heated during the examination to be able to observe the phenomena occurring at higher temperatures. For this purpose, the specimen may be placed on a support whose temperature is adjustable, and then the problem to be solved is a reliable transfer of heat; this is particularly important with treatments in a vacuum chamber. That is, in this latter case, already minute gaps between the contacting surfaces of the specimen and the heatable or coolable support produce a disturbing effect, since through evacuated interstitial spaces, the temperature becomes equilibrated predominantly only by radiation, hardly any longer by heat conduction in the gas atmosphere of the vacuum. This may result in considerable temperature differences between the support and the specimen and in such instances the temperature of the support can no longer serve as a measure for the temperature of the specimen during the treatment or examination.